Jan 28, 12:56 AM by Steve | Around and Around We Go

Continuing on the theme of the journey being more interesting than the destination, the drive home from Nevada was not without adventure. We were doing fine to Barstow but hit brutal traffic about 8 miles outside of Victorville. It took hours to go just a few miles, so we called Kim’s father for some alternative routing. We were supposed to take the 18 due west to the 138, but somehow the 18 forked off and we ended up on a different road. It wound around and took us back to Barstow! The second time around, we took the 58 out to Mojave and caught the 14 from there. If we had taken that the first time, we would have saved nearly 3 hours…

My race had its share of drama as well. The course was 35 miles out and back up a mountain and down the other side, 4700’ total climbing. The frontside climb was fairly straight with a steady moderate grade, then a screaming winding descent. The group had a very lazy start and we got caught by the front of the 5s a few miles in. More on that later. We were all more or less together at the top, but shattered on the way down. It was difficult to see much in the rain and fog, and brakes were pretty much useless. Despite that, and that I generally consider myself to be a horrible descender, I managed to bridge back up to the lead group after initially getting gapped. When we reached the turnaround there were only a handful of us. On the way back up, a few riders attacked, including one of the UCLA riders from yesterday. I was in the chase group, which included two more UCLA riders and Gabe from Chicken Ranch.

One guy from Helen’s was doing most of the pace-setting, with the UCLA boys sitting on his wheel, not wanting to chase their teammate down. The pace was easing because nobody seemed to want to be the one to do the work, so I went up and picked things up to keep our group away from any chasers. The pace actually dropped off several riders from our group, including Gabe, but in the end turned out to be more than I could sustain, and I popped after an attack from one of the UCLA guys.

I was probably sitting around 10th at that point, but was eventually caught by Gabe and a few other riders. The real bummer was that I developed a slow leak about halfway up the climb and dialed down the effort in an attempt to nurse it until I could get my spare wheel from the SAG. I stopped at the top of the climb, at the 10 mile mark, where a radio operator called in for my wheel. While I was waiting, watching many 4s go riding by, the mechanic came and changed my tube. I was set back about 7 minutes according to my recorded data. In reality, I placed 22nd (of 28 starters) in the RR and GC. Mentally subtracting that from my time netted me several places, putting me in (in my head) in about 12th or so.

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